At the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, Italian furniture companies Casa Italia and Edra have teamed up to create a residence project that will house Italian athletes during the competition. The result is the Ensemble space, the name and concept of which refer to the slogan of the French Revolution, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and especially to its last part, ensemble, which translates from French as “together.” So this choice is intended to emphasize the cultural similarities between the two participating countries.
The site chosen for the project was the 19th-century Le Pre Catelan pavilion in the Bois de Boulogne. It was furnished by Milanese furniture maker Edra, who filled the meeting rooms, lounge areas, restaurants, galleries and gardens with pieces from their collections, which are displayed alongside works of art.
For example, in the athletes’ lounge area, Edra proposed the concept of “sky in the room” as a metaphor for the feats and achievements of the Olympians. The role of the cloud here is played by the snow-white Cipria sofa, created for the collection by the Campana brothers, one of the most famous design duos in the world.
The gallery space features Francesco Binfaré's Sherazade sofa, inspired by oriental motifs. The ceiling of the space is decorated with Tappeto Volante, a joint work by the Stalker art group and the Roman community of Kurdish refugees. These are 41,472 hemp ropes imitating the muqarnas (elements of the vault in the form of faceted recesses) on the ceiling of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, a symbol of millennial Italian hospitality that united Greek, Latin, Arabic and Norman cultures.
This is not the first project that has brought together Italian companies. Founded in Tuscany in 1987, Edra, run by Valerio and Monica Mazzei, began collaborating with Casa Italia in 2016, during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, and has since been preparing a new project for the Italian team for each Olympics.
